Waiting For Robbin’ Hood At The Goal Line

Mark Karlin, Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout declares that America today is “a tale of two Americas: one gorging on gluttony, and one barely able to survive.”

The Wall Street Journalsupports this claim, citing data from a study by the Hay Group that CEO bonuses at 50 major corporations jumped a median of 30.5% last year as 487,000 additional Americans took food stamps during the month of November 2010. Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans asked for government aid, with an approximate total of 45 million Americans now receiving assistance. I don’t hear any unemployed Tea Baggers screaming “Take your government hands off my food subsidy!”

And we likely won’t, not as long as there is so much focus on a much more important struggle: that being the major league battle between the billionaire NFL owners and their contracted millionaire minions. There is plenty of reason for working class concern over this contest in these impecunious times, for while the NFL is pondering rule changes intended to improve player safety, there may not be any games to play with the players locked out by the owners. It must be for the players’ own good! Bill Plaschke, writing in The Chicago Tribune. notes that while NFL players are putting their bodies and careers on the line with every play, it’s the owners who want “more guarantees” that they will get more revenue to compensate for the “risks they take”. Let’s see now – risking one’s fortune versus risking one’s health, or even one’s life (as Reggie Brown of the Detroit Lions almost discovered the hard way). Plaschke’s decision? It goes against the owners: “We simply cannot abide their greed.”

Plaschke’s opinion is widely shared, yet this isn’t stopping the owners from expecting tax payers to provide them with new stadia -whether or not there is even a team to play in that city- because with the previous one they got only a few years ago doesn’t have a roof to keep those Texas blizzards off the field, nor enough luxury boxes to sell to the CEOs with the bonus bucks to blow.

First the owners came for the benefits to increase profits, then the wages; will it then the jobs? Is there no end to their avarice?

Not according to Bob Barr of The Atlanta Journal Constitution, who denounces the idea that “to win the privilege of hosting one particular football game several years from now, Georgia taxpayers would have to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars for a state-of-the-art sports stadium.”

So let’s not worry about the fact that the fans are losing the ability to keep the home with the new HDTV to watch professional football games for which they are being priced out of buying tickets. Let’s make sure that -once again- the wealthy get their wishes realized while the rest of us foot the ball – I mean, bill. It must be for the fans’ own good!